How to beat Vampirism

Conquering Vampirism: A Comprehensive Player Guide

In this guide, we will examine the Rift Breaker Boss named Vampirism, exploring his abilities and strategies for achieving the most significant hits possible. In our previous guides, we delved into Venom and Amplify – two bosses that are complete opposites.

With Vampirism, we encounter a unique boss that balances continuous damage and high burst damage, without being immune to control but not particularly weak to it either. Unfortunately, defeating this boss requires a considerable investment in pay-to-play skills and setups, along with very high power to outscale the damage output. Personally, it is my least favorite of the three bosses.

Firstly, let’s cover the basics

Vampirism possesses an active skill and two passive skills to engage in battle. Its active skill, ‘Super Spiderweb,’ inflicts massive Magical Damage to enemies while absorbing health equal to 50% of the damage dealt. Despite my attempts to test wounds against this effect, I did not observe any healing negation. However, wounds debuffs are worth further investigation for future encounters with Vampirism. Please try this out yourself and share your results!

In addition to the active burst skill, the boss has a passive skill called ‘Counterattack.’ This ability poses a significant threat as it counters the high damage output required for a boss-killing build. The boss cannot regenerate passive energy, but every time it takes damage, it gains energy.

Once it reaches 300 energy, it uses Torment, inflicting additional damage on your team.

Consequently, setups like Alexander Berserk, Wind Rage, Combo, and Wind Rage + Adrenaline Rush regen builds are not effective due to the high frequency of damage instances, causing setups to rapidly self-destruct. To counter this, focus on building more damage into attacks rather than increasing attack speed. For example, on Alexander, consider using Anger or even Duel Master over some attack speed-boosting skills.

Weaknesses: Shadow, Lightning, Wind
While exploiting weaknesses for an added 25% damage is beneficial, it is not the sole determinant of what works best. The weakness to lightning can be advantageous if wounds prove effective, but using lightning requires a Charles to avoid quick demise. Although a leech shadow team might work, I have not witnessed any build achieving sustained power high enough to combat Vampirism as effectively as Holy Energy Shield builds.

Control strategies

Control strategies can be effective against Vampirism. Stuns, roots, and confusion effects can mitigate incoming damage. However, achieving awe-inspiring results with control builds is challenging, and luck plays a significant role, especially with perfect confusion procs around important skill triggers. Loki holies are top-tier for this boss. While I experimented with Instigation builds, I found the value to be lacking compared to running other defensive or offensive buffs on my support Immortals.

What you should be doing:

There are numerous spider-killing builds, and my setup is continually evolving. However, some fundamentals remain consistent:

• Running high energy regen on Immortals like Hippolytta and Khubilaikhan provides substantial offensive capability. Note that Wind-Rage regen builds are weaker on this boss than on others, but you may still want to use them for the additional damage. Be aware that you will need to enhance offensive capacity with more sustain due to triggering more regen effects with increased damage instances to the boss.

• Utilize combo and other single-target damage skills on your physical damage-dealing frontliners. While Combo still yields good results, consider running it in combination with Anger instead of Wind Rage to maximize damage per hit.

• Always apply Weakness. Bosses have relatively low resistance, and with weakness, you gain a consistently high crit rate, crucial for maximizing damage.

• Incorporate defensive strategies. Against Vampirism, shield effects are essential due to continuous damage. Charles is an MVP Immortal for this boss fight. Additionally, tower of knowledge skills like Energy Shield and Jade Barrier are potent against Vampirism.

• Regarding Life-Link + Absolute Defense combos, this is recommended against Vampirism. While it yields better results than against Venom, it has less impact than against Amplify. The boss deals considerable damage to your tank Immortal, but the main threat is the AOE damage. This combo is strong enough to be recommended, and I achieved varying results in battles. I also experimented with an Assist + Absolute Defense + Life-Link combination on my tank, which worked well, but the usefulness of Assist depends on your build and backline reliance.

• This week, prioritize defensive ToK skills such as Resist over control slots. This allows for more damage boons instead of control, but also necessitates prioritizing defense and sustain over some offensive capacities used in Amplify builds.

• The best defenses against Vampirism include:
  • Charles, the Earth tank Immortal, due to powerful shields.
  • Life-Link + Absolute Defense on your tank.
  • Resist, a powerful effect against Magical Damage.

Note that dodge rate and attack speed reductions are almost worthless for this boss. Additionally, Hippolytta is ineffective for Vampirism, as her ability to remove energy is useless against this boss.

Here are my notable builds for Vampirism

• Khubilaikhan – Alexander – Qin – Zeno builds still top my list with 97.6M damage. However, they are noticeably weaker due to the high attack speed of the build, making it challenging to sustain the damage being dealt back.

• I experimented with a holy pure build, achieving decent results with 79.7M damage. However, this setup required removing Khubilaikhan from the earth team. I then changed it to a Himiko-Alexander-Charles-Zeno earth team, which performed well with Charles’s exceptional sustain, achieving 78.4M damage.

• My fire build performed poorly, as expected, with 35.9M damage hits. Fire lacks sustain, leading to troop losses and reduced damage output. If fire or lightning is your main in PvP combat, it’s advisable to use them for bosses as well, running Charles and considering swapping out Hippolytta this week for better sustain.

• None of my attempts came close to the whale holy setups. A holy team achieved top ranking on my server with 188M damage, showcasing the boss’s reliance on raw power and healing capability. With a maxed Theo, energy shield, Vitality Touch, and Spring of Life, these builds can sustain high troop counts for extended periods, allowing low single-target builds to still deal significant total damage.

I can only imagine what the biggest holy whales can achieve on this boss if they tried hard for it. Definitely not a F2P or light spender friendly boss.

Published: 01-12-2023